07 January, 2010

“Human geneticists have reached a private crisis of conscience, and it will become public knowledge in 2010. The crisis has depressing health implications and alarming political ones. In a nutshell: the new genetics will reveal much less than hoped about how to cure disease, and much more than feared about human evolution and inequality, including genetic differences between classes, ethnicities and races.”

This is the lead into an article found in The Economist by Geoffrey Miller in which he examines the advances and trials of genetic research. His concern seem to be that further exploration down this “yellow brick road” might nor bring us to “Kansas” but instead might provide fodder or justification for the type of ethnic based violence that marked so many years with the last century.

I do find it interesting that the great concern is that such research might bring about a widespread conflict between humans of difference ethnicities, but seem to have little concern about the possible perversion of life in the name of science. It reminds me of those feminists who are rabid supporters of a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy via an abortion… so long as it isn’t done as an exercise if gender selection (don’t want to tips the scales of power even further into the grips of we patriarchal types!)

It does make one think thought, and that in itself can be an excellent idea, especially when it comes to whether or not we (as a society) are willing to let scientists try to “improve the species” through genetic manipulation.